


these streets

by andnowforyaya



Series: We Collected Swells [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hawaii, M/M, Pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:30:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He smelled like Fall, even though the sun beat down on the island outside, and the waves crashed against the sand.</p><p>"Well," Stiles forced through his teeth. "Are you going to let me in?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	these streets

Stiles hitched the duffel bag higher up onto his shoulder, eyes obscured by sunglasses and his lips in a tight, thin line. He was wearing a grey t-shirt that was speckled darker in some areas from sweat, and a beat up baseball cap over his hair. His cheeks were red, and he shuffled his feet. Derek felt like he was looking at a mirage. He gaped, a fish on land.

He smelled like Fall, even though the sun beat down on the island outside, and the waves crashed against the sand.

"Well," Stiles forced through his teeth. "Are you going to let me in?"

So Derek stepped aside, and let him in.

.

It's been two years.

Derek wakes with his hand curled around nothing, Stiles' side of the bed empty. He can hear sounds coming from their kitchen, sizzling from a pan and the sucking sound of the refrigerator door. Glass clinks against wood, and then the smells hit him, too. Aromatic and faintly Asian, sweet-soy and sesame. His stomach rumbles and he smiles against his teeth.

.

Erica called nearly every day for a year when he left, updating him incessantly on the Pack's escapades in New York. She waited tables in the mornings and afternoons, and Isaac found work at an animal rescue center, and Boyd did - well, if she were honest, she wasn't exactly sure what Boyd did, but he made ends meet, and they all squeezed together in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights but it was good, it was _real_ , and he should visit. She was starting to forget what he smelled like.

She always seemed to know when Derek would be on break; when he had downtime, his phone would inevitably buzz in his shorts - and nowadays he wore swim trunks or board shorts over anything else more often that not - and she would say in his ear in her low and sultry way, "You practically made me mama wolf, Derek. I'm horrible at it! We're all going to die within the year. You have to visit."

Derek could hear the whimper masked in her voice, could hear even Isaac in the background, pacing most likely, whining. "You come out here," he would tell her. "Come out to Hawaii and see if _you_ ever want to leave," and Erica would huff and they would hang up before they could talk about anything of real substance.

Once, Scott called, and Derek had raised his eyebrows in surprise even though the other couldn't see, when he answered. They had kept their communication restricted to texts and photos, and were comfortable with that. "Scott," he had greeted on the phone, fighting to keep uncertainty from slipping into his voice.

"Derek," Scott said, gruff. A pause. Derek's fingers itched. He was lounging on his couch, and he muted the television with the remote.

"Stiles graduated today," Scott said finally.

Derek's heart lurched up into his throat at the sudden image of Stiles in a cap and gown - in his _third_ cap and gown, to be precise. "Oh," he said with difficulty around the lump. He knew Scott could hear it.

"Yeah. It would. You should." Scott stopped, collected himself. "I think you should call him."

"You think so?" he repeated, stalling for time. Suddenly his fingers itched for an entirely different reason.

And Scott had said, "Don't be a dumbass," quickly, before the line went dead from the other side. Derek threw the phone into the cushions of his couch and then slumped forward, head in his hands.

He didn't call him. He texted him a single word: _Congratulations_. He hadn't expected anything in return.

.

The house was rebuilt but the land was cursed. The dirt had soaked up too much Hale blood, and the blood was old and poison. Derek understood that, now. So he let the reins he held over Isaac and Boyd and Erica loose, and he left Scott and Allison the keys to his old home. 

Stiles was in another state, in college, with Lydia. He left him a voicemail in the middle of finals.

Derek had never been any good at subtlety, had never been particularly verbose or eloquent. His voicemail went something like this: _Stiles I know when you get this you're going to be really fucking angry but know that I care about you but that I'm leaving. I'm leaving Beacon Hills and it's for the best to keep you all safe and if you need anything Scott has the keys to my house and Deaton has stored away a lot of mountain ash and wolfsbane. So. Goodbye._

He almost called back. The message had been incomplete. He had forgotten to say the most important thing.

.

It had been two days and Derek still blinked when he saw Stiles shuffling around in the kitchen in his slippers, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and banging all his cabinets open for coffee and finding none.

"Dude," Stiles said when he saw Derek up for the morning, pointing at his empty cabinets accusingly. "How do you even live?"

Stiles was a mirage. A hallucination sent to him to test him. He was succumbing to island fever. He missed him with an ache that settled deep in his bones. Now, he was here, and he could be real or not real, but he was sifting through the various cereals Derek had and wrinkling his nose at every one of them, and then he was scribbling something onto a piece of scrap paper he found on the counter, and then he was walking over to his duffel bag on the couch and rifling through its contents, pulling out a shirt seemingly at random and exchanging it for the one he had on. His skin was shark-bait pale.

"Does this make me look like a tourist?" Stiles asked Derek, pulling the shirt out a little so that he could look at it himself. It was a thin shirt that used to have graphics of some band on it, but now it was so faded that Derek could barely make out a 'T'.

His lips were suddenly very dry. He licked them, parched. "What?"

"Yeah, I'll take that as a no," Stiles had announced. He dug into the couch cushions for something, and pulled out his wallet. "So, you need anything?"

Derek licked his lips again. "What?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm getting groceries. You're a full-grown werewolf! How do you survive on cereal and orange juice?"

"There's a really good sandwich shop across the street from my gym," Derek blurted, the longest sentence he's uttered since Stiles showed up on his doorstep. Stiles just raised a brow and smirked, and it sent a shiver racing down Derek's back.

When he came back with three bags of the basics, Derek was still numb from sleep and shock, disbelief and relief and need and want, and all of the feelings he could feel he thought he had left back in Beacon Hills. And then there was Stiles in his kitchen. And he was making pancakes.

.

Derek caved.

He called Scott.

"Hello?" Scott answered.

"He's _here_ ," Derek growled, unexpectedly forthcoming. His hair stood on edge. He was a wreck after spending four days with Stiles so close and unsure whether he had permission to touch. "Why is he _here_?"

Silence on the other end. "You mean you don't know?" Scott asked. "You're, like, _really_ emotionally stunted, aren't you?"

Derek growled again, a real growl this time, and Scott heard the Alpha in his voice. "Jesus, Derek, why do you _think_ he flew out to Hawaii with no return ticket?"

Scott hung up on him. Again.

.

After a week the tension had settled into a cloak around his shoulders, and Derek wore it uncomfortably, but it was like an accustomed weight, so it was bearable. He took Stiles out to watch the swells break and froth when the sun was just starting to set, and bought him a Shaved Ice in red. The juice stained Stiles' lips and tongue cherry. Derek stared at the way Stiles licked his lips, smiled when he spoke, huffed laughter when he joked. But he didn't touch him, even if the air between them was electric.

The drive back to Derek's was silent. They rolled the windows down of his little sports car and the warm wind whistled through the openings. Stiles' hair hadn't been longer, then, but his eyes were the same shade of honey-brown. "I've got a job interview tomorrow," Stiles yelled over the wind, looking out the window. The breeze carried away half of his words. He laughed, a soft, ringing sound, and then he crowed.

"I'm still angry with you," he told Derek later, his knee pressed against the mattress, seeking permission. "I'm going to be angry for a long time, but I'm here, and you're here, and this place is so fucking majestic I can't keep a negative thought in my head, and all I want to do is put my mouth on you and sleep in this huge fucking bed with you and pretend that the last few years didn't happen. Or, that they did, but you weren't a bitch about leaving. Please tell me you feel the same way." By now he had put both knees on Derek's bed, and he looked pale and slim and cut from silver in the moonlight. Derek wanted to put his hands all over him. 

"Because you could have shut the door in my face," Stiles continued, babbling and oblivious. "You could have asked me to leave. But you didn't. So I think."

He didn't get to say what he thought, because Derek chose that moment to close the distance between them, and he kissed those cherry lips until Stiles was gasping for breath, until his hands were shaking as reached up to cup Derek's face. He felt wetness on his cheeks, and licked up the saltiness greedily.

"Oh god," Stiles was saying. "Oh god, oh god."

Derek kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.

.

**Author's Note:**

> "It's beautiful moonlit on the road tonight/I got no one here by my side/I used to walk under these lights with you." - _These Streets_ , Yuna
> 
> Thanks for reading and if you have any suggestions for artists who sound like Yuna and/or Zee Avi I would really appreciate them :)


End file.
